Exploring Personal Monsters with NYT

Have you ever wondered how even the wildest, most fantastical horror reflects our very real hidden fears? Of course you have, you’re a thinking person! Fear is universal and has great power, and so do the movies that harness it for us.

Yesterday Manohla Dargis and A.O. Scott at The New York Times had a little conversation about the nature of monsters in horror lately. It’s a great introduction for those curious or are new to the genre thanks to the recent audience-expanding success of films like Get Out, Green Room, and Split (welcome!) They examine what might be adding to the horror element these days as well as give a neat little history introduction to the genre’s monsters and how our anxieties have been manifested throughout, even in places you might not have thought about.

There are the monsters, like the new King Kong, which deliver an environmental cautionary tale, much as “Jaws” did in the 1970s, a decade filled with nature-bites-back stories. Thus far this year, though, the two movies with the most inventive, rage-fueled monster metaphors have been “Get Out” and “Colossal,” in which the monster is squirmingly familiar.